By Jenny Gonzalez, Corporate Relations Officer, New York Cares

Biloxi, Mississippi? Volunteering with Soap stars? Hmmmm, I thought…this will certainly be a unique experience. When I agreed to go to Mississippi to do Katrina related work, I must admit, my initial reaction was mixed. I wasn’t particularly familiar with the need in Mississippi (after all, others from the New York Cares office had gone to New Orleans last summer). Mississippi was never the focal point in the papers, how great could the need be? But I packed my bags and headed to the airport with my colleague Colleen Farrell.

Jenny building a wall in Biloxi.
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New York Cares’ Production Manager Jamie D’Andrea created a beautiful site that shows the amazing work our volunteer team did in New Orleans last month.

web.mac.com/jamiedandrea

Enjoy!

Today we were back at Bertha’s house. We were starting to get the hang of things. We switched out jobs so we didn’t get too tired doing one thing. We ate a snack mid-morning and talked about how much of a difference raisins can make in raising someone’s energy level.

Today, our task was Stage Two of the mold removal process — vacuuming. But before we could do that, we had to tackle the basement. You do mold removal from the top down in a house — so the stuff that you scrape off doesn’t fall on an already cleaned area. Our Hands On Network Team Leader, Ali, told us we’d see different colored molds. We saw white, green and black. She swore there is a fuchsia mold. While we didn’t see fuchsia, there was a distinct rainbow of spores in this basement. We all pulled our respirators on tighter and got to work.

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We completed our first day working. Our group split up — some did a ‘gut’, and my group did mold removal. A gut is the first step in the demolition process. Volunteers come in and tear out the (not so) dry-wall and other damaged areas. They basically strip everything, leaving the floor and studs of the house intact. When they’re done, the mold team comes in. The mold team takes wire brushes and scrubs every surface in the house. When the scrubbing is done, volunteers clean with industrial vacuums, wipe every surface down with Lysol, then paint everything with mold resident paint. Everything we do, gutting and mold removal, is done in a full plastic tyvex suit, respirator and goggles. Imagine cleaning your house with a small hair brush while dressed in a garbage bag from head to toe. I was so hot that I began to empathize with the plight of steamed vegetables.

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I’m arriving in New Orleans by plane for the first time. I look out the window at the Mississippi River and wonder about all the details to the landscape that I can’t see from the plane. I think the river looks quite busy with shipping business, though I don’t have much of a frame of reference–what was this like before? A question I realize I’ll probably ask a number of times. My six plane companions and me (we’re meeting 3 more in N.O.) wonder what our experience will be like. When they say ‘mold removal’ what exactly does that mean? When they say don’t EVER open a refrigerator, how many times did it take to learn that lesson?

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On Saturday, July 1st, nine New York Cares staff members flew to New Orleans to help with rebuilding work after Hurricane Katrina. Our team joined a group from the Hands On Network (a national network of volunteer organizations of which we’re a member). Together, volunteers from around the country are helping families demolish flood damaged houses as the first step towards building new homes, and new lives.

We asked New York Cares Education Program Director Meghan (Meg) Moloney to keep a diary of her experiences. Her stories will be posted on this blog over the next two weeks. We hope you find her thoughts and experiences as inspiring as we do. They remind us that New York Cares volunteers make an amazing difference wherever they go!